I hold ISY so it was no bad thing to read this announcement yesterday:
Australian Stock Exchange Limited ELS006.2003 Company Announcement Office Electronic Lodgement System
18 July 2002
Dear Sir/Madam
J. BLACKWOOD & SON LTD
The Board of Directors of IPT Systems Limited (“IPT” or “the Company”) is pleased to report to shareholders that the Company’s wholly owned subsidiary, Synergy Business Solutions Australia Pty Ltd (“SYNERGY”), has formally executed a contract to provide a Purchase Order Delivery Solution for J. Blackwood and Son Ltd (“Blackwoods”), a division of the Wesfarmers Group. As previously reported in the Third Quarter Activities Report for the period ended 31 March 2002 (as announced to the ASX on 30 April 2002), SYNERGY management continues to focus on offering commercial solutions to groups of companies where conversion to paperless transaction and settlement systems will yield the greatest operational and financial gains for those organisations. As a result of the adoption of this strategy, SYNERGY is targeting vertically and horizontally integrated conglomerates and diversified companies both at a national and international level. Blackwoods is such a company. The contract will allow the Blackwoods organisation to leverage off SYNERGY's technological and organisational expertise. i.e. by providing a business solution that can be transferred to other business units within the group, thus allowing for cross-enterprise costs savings, improved customer ownership and retention as well as a range of other benefits.
The Blackwoods organisation commercial requirement of the Purchase Order Delivery Solution is to facilitate the “purchase order delivery process” between Blackwood’s branches and their wholesale suppliers. Purchase orders created by Blackwood’s branches are delivered to Blackwood’s suppliers via the SYNERGY DataCentre using SYNERGY TradeCentre components in real time, with order delivery confirmation and error reporting.
SYNERGY in conjunction with Blackwoods and the Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Management Solutions Team, defined the scope and functional specification of the Purchase Order Delivery Solution. This included analysis of the Blackwoods group business requirement, impact on existing process and methodology for exchange of data between its Enterprise Resource Planning (“ERP”) system (“Backoffice”) and the SYNERGY TradeCentre.
Pre-development, development and pre-operational verification of the Purchase Order Delivery Solution is scheduled for user (Blackwoods) acceptance signoff by Friday 23 August 2002, thereafter rollout to Blackwood’s branches commences. SYNERGY is being paid a commercial fee for development services.
The generation of Blackwood’s transaction revenue to SYNERGY for the Purchase Order Delivery Solution, will commence post user acceptance signoff by Blackwoods. Initial estimates indicate the Blackwoods group will process approximately 900,000 transactions per annum. Furthermore, as supply chain integration across the Blackwoods group progresses and additional functionality from SYNERGY is introduced, significant transaction growth is anticipated.
The revenues from this contract will assist SYNERGY in its stated aim to reduce the rate of depletion of its cash reserves.